


when the horizon turns black

by magisterequitum



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: Canon Backstory, F/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 10:16:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1105619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Tk with the ability to teleport had to have a clear mind before making the jump from one place to the next. It had been Kristine who had given him the grounding he needed.</p><p>“Ten heartbeats,” she’d said. Those velvet black eyes with flickering white. “Ten heartbeats. And then go.”</p><p>It is a lesson he doesn’t forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the horizon turns black

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to explore Judd and how he changed through the Net and the years as an Arrow and then fill in parts with the Lauren family. So this blends pre-series and Caressed by Ice and then going forward.

He has no memory of their parents. Either of them, though he knows that the three of them lived with their father, the chosen half of the parental contract; while both bound them together in genetics, Walker and Kristine had chosen before, and so Judd had followed. Part of him surely has suppressed the thoughts and memories, locked it away somewhere. It is cruel to say but neither of the two persons who gave him life had ever been instrumental to him. He has no need for it. 

It is of no consequence either because he does not stay long in the apartments after he turns ten. 

Ten turns of the hourglass then, each leaving him grasping to find a center. Psy do not hope, they do not feel, and there is no name for what sits in the back of his mind, but it is there and leaves a taste on his tongue. 

A Tk with the ability to teleport had to have a clear mind before making the jump from one place to the next. It had been Kristine who had given him the grounding he needed. 

“Ten heartbeats,” she’d said. Those velvet black eyes with flickering white. “Ten heartbeats. And then go.”

It is a lesson he doesn’t forget. 

 

 

 

_i._

It is no secret that the Lauren family genetics breed strong and true. 

Judd is seven when he cuts Kristine’s arm. The blood that swells to the surface is lighter than her hair plaited out of her face. The cut is a slash across her forearm where blue veins stand out. Two inches further down and he’d have slashed her wrist. 

It’s only them in the family compound. 

He’s silent as he stares at the cut. He doesn’t know how he did it. It had just happened. Unblemished smooth skin as she’d prepared him a nutrient drink, a blink of an eye, and then red staining her skin. 

“Oh,” Kristine says and grabs for a towel. That is all she says after, even though it must have caused her pain. He will remember it for decades. 

Covered up, he still cannot look away. Seven and he barely comes to her chest. He will remember this too. Perfect snapshot that he will always be able to recall. 

She bends over, his red haired sister with the blinding eyes, and his vision swims and refocuses as she’s directly in his line sight now. The fuzziness falls away from his ears. She holds the towel to her arm with one hand, palm clamped down. “Judd,” she says softly. “Oh, Judd.”

 

 

_ii._

At ten they take him away. 

It is an accident. 

He attends classes like all Psy children, and when it is made known that he possesses an affinity for telekineses, unlike his older siblings that are primarily telepaths, he is shuffled into specialized physical classes as well. 

Until he kills another child. 

It is an accident. Just like with Kristine. 

His sister has never told anyone what he did to her, not even Walker or their father. A secret and she’d pretended as if it had never happened. 

It is an accident. Bones snap but officially it is the boy’s heart that stops, and Judd knows that he did it. He hadn’t meant to, not consciously acted to do it, and that is what the physicians and trainers say, but their eyes alight on him as if he is something prized. As if they’d found something spectacular. As if he didn’t just murder a child a year younger than him. 

It is an accident and they make him Arrow. 

 

 

_iii._

Despite the fact that Arrows are rumors in the Net, designed that way to facilitate the ease of their purpose and duties, Judd knows what they are. It is hard to remain oblivious when your brother teaches the children picked out to be the assassins. The Lauren family does not keep secrets from each other. They do not lie to one another. 

Maybe they know, the Psy instructors at the facilities, that for all their Silence the Lauren family is far more loyal than most others. Maybe that is why they do not let Walker teach him. 

Judd is shuffled off elsewhere and broken far away from anyone who cares for him. 

Psy children are taught Silence at an early age. So as to not allow the brain to develop outside of being shaped in a manner consistent with their race’s purpose. Arrow children are taught Silence even faster. Those who can teleport even faster. With the ability to escape it’s imperative to do so. Judd’s arm is broken fifty-three times before he learns not to feel pain. Intelligence he has, and he knows not to flee away where he can be tracked so easily at this age, but it takes more to reroute the synapses of his brain not to flinch or turn away or react. 

He listens to his heartbeat and breathes in and out. The bone cracks, a violent noise in the sterile white room. He does nothing. 

 

 

 

_iv._

The man in front of him has velvet black eyes like Kristine. He has not seen his sister in months, but he knows now that he is an uncle to a niece that has turned two. She had been pregnant when he’d been removed from the family. 

The man introduces himself as Ming LeBon, a former Arrow himself, and though his eyes are the same as his sister’s, they have far fewer white specks in them. Endless black that looks inside him and does not ever move away. 

He doesn’t ask Judd what he can do. All of his trainers ask this when they are introduced to him for the first time. They ask what he can do, and then he performs for them, showing them his abilities, his raw talent, the darker things of causing someone’s body to act as he wills; the cut he’d done to Kristine so long ago is simplistic compared to now. He can do so much more. 

Ming LeBon, Councilor LeBon, doesn’t ask. 

He shows. 

White completely disappears and then he shows Judd exactly why he is the leader of the armed forces of the Psy race, exactly what he’d learned as an Arrow, the mental capabilities that made him so formidable that the trainers didn’t dare be in the room with them. 

This is the thing about cardinals: they are intoxicating. Their eyes give them away, but it is their abilities that draw people in. The amount of raw power at their mind’s quick thought, and how each cardinal possesses the insatiable appetite to be more in their abilities. Judd has no defenses to it and doesn’t try to raise any. The offer is accepted. 

“It will be my privilege,” Councilor LeBon says after Judd has acquiesced, as if he ever truly had a choice. The question had been voiced as if he did though, and that is the spell woven over him that he will not realize for years. His voice is oily slick, small white flickers in dead eyes. “You will be among the finest.” 

 

 

_v._

When he is older, when he’s grown taller and his broken arm is more memory than anything else, it is easier for him to teleport away. Ming keeps him on a facility in France close enough to be tethered when needed. But he’s proven himself over, and a shadow no longer watches him where he goes. He can be tracked on the Net if needed. Perhaps it’s foolish to leave himself unguarded there mostly, but he does it anyway. 

Though his primary location may now be in France, the Lauren family compound has not moved. He only needs to close his eyes and recall the image, center himself and count to ten. 

Kristine is not home. It’s Walker who greets him. 

“Judd,” his older brother says when he materializes and opens his eyes. 

For a moment he nearly recoils and leaves. 

“Judd,” Walker says again, green eyes steady in the dim artificial lighting of the living room. Neither of them have moved. Somewhere he knows his niece is sleeping. Green eyes blink slowly and then, “Judd, are you alright?”

“Yes.” An automatic answer, forced off his tongue without any hesitation. His hands are stiff by his side and his clothes are all black save for the silver snakes on his chest. 

“Alright.” Still they are standing unmoving. 

It’s only now that he realizes why he’d come, that he’d felt compelled to tell someone what has been happening. It’s not uncertainty that lingers, or doubts, because Psy do not feel such things; but maybe it would be something close to that if he were ever to parse out what the humans and changelings deem emotions in a dictionary.

“He has me train the others. The younger ones,” an absurd statement since he himself is only sixteen years of age. “To see if they are strong enough.” The next part fails on his tongue, so he switches to the telepathic link that has never been severed. _Many don’t last._

Walker doesn’t respond, but his gaze doesn’t leave either. They eventually end up sitting side by side, and it’s quiet until Sienna wakes with a soft cry, but Judd sits till then with the solid presence of his brother next to him. 

 

 

 

_vi._

Lauren family genetics breed true and true. He had known it to be so when he’d watched his sister and brother develop their skills, and known it to be so when he’d been taken himself. Their family is a prized one, considered a success amongst the Psy race in whispered talks. They are dangerous too. It is why all three of them have always been tightly bound by the Council to do as they willed. 

He knows from Walker that Sienna had burned Kristine. Part of him shudders when he hears the news. An X-Psy is something even Arrows recoil from. 

Kristine’s mouth is tight next time he sees her when she says, “I’m alright.” Nearly the same repeated words that he’d been told. He wonders if Sienna had marked Kristine the same way he’d done over a decade ago now. “I stopped her.” 

If she’d been anything less than that cardinal telepath she is, she’d have burned up to nothing. 

It should not have been a surprise then when he sees Sienna with Ming next. His mentor keeps him around when he is not fulfilling orders of execution, and it is to this he returns to. He’s not even washed the bloodstains from his hands. 

She is tiny and small, his niece, and looks already too much like Kristine. The same hair that will darken later in life and star-filled eyes set in black velvet. 

Judd says nothing when Ming tells him in that same oily slick tone from before, “Another Lauren I have now.” 

He doesn’t speak and his hands are dirty. 

 

 

 

_vii._

It takes him several years before he realizes that Ming sees Sienna not as an Arrow. She will never be an Arrow formally. Arrows belong to the Council, sent to do their bidding. Sienna belongs to Ming. She is his ultimate weapon, fire come to life that makes Judd’s skills pale in comparison to damage. 

She is eleven and Silent and asks to be trained by Ming. Part of him splinters away. He wills that Kristine will hide Toby, that she will shield him enough. He wills too that Walker will keep Marlee a secret. 

When he is able to feel fully and name what is inside him, he will carry this shame with him for the rest of his life. As it is now, he knows there is a part of him that stirs uneasily. An agitation that sends shivers of pain down his spine from dissonance. 

The Psy-Net is where he can retreat and flow in the utter blackness. He is legally dead by his race’s knowledge; Arrows are not seen or heard and do not exist with any given name to the masses. Because of this no one approaches him on the Net. Unknown, unrecognizable he floats along traces of information. His senses raise when he finds that someone has been following him, someone who is far better at hiding than he is. 

Judd finds himself hailed when he purposely floats along a path he knows he’s been followed on several times prior. It is a vacant section of the Net, remote and isolated. 

Every Psy has their own signature in the Net. A distinct flavor and brightness, linked to their abilities. Councilors burned brightest. Cardinals flared with their power. The one before him now is utter blackness, but there is pressure that hints at the fact that Judd could be crushed easily. He’s not, his mind is safe and intact and no attack comes upon his psychic self, but the feeling is still there. It’s not unlike an electric charge, a static humming. 

The Ghost, as they will be called in the future, speaks of dissent and rebellion and the betterment of their race. A new path from the rot and destruction that is too easy to see for anyone who looks. 

Judd thinks of his nieces and nephew, of Kristine who hears too much beyond her dilapidating shields, of Walker who still teaches the children assassins. 

This blackness and offer before him is just as intoxicating, and he says yes. 

 

 

 

_viii._

Defection is the hardest thing he has done. 

Harder than killing, which has grown far too easy to do, harder than mastering his abilities and the control he needs every day, harder than doing as Ming asks while meeting with the Ghost hours later, harder than trying to hide the thoughts that creep in on how his family needs him more. It is for his family that he does so. Kristine jumps and dies and Walker and he know they must leave. Their time is out. 

Judd is hesitant and is never more relieved when Sienna says she will go with them, that they will not leave her too. They could both stay, she and he, but they don’t want to. 

The SnowDancer den is loud and vibrant and everything that he’s never seen before. Life had been muted, as if he’d been underwater. Now he’s an exposed live wire where his surroundings threaten to send him off-kilter at any moment. There’s too much and he won’t touch, but it’s there. 

The children are safe though. Little Marlee and her ribbon plaited braid, Toby and his quiet nature, and Sienna who is too much like him but has straying eyes as well. 

If his niece’s eyes follow the one who’d given them shelter, he ignores it surely as the fact that sometimes his gaze lingers on a bright blonde head for no discernible reason. 

“Will we stay?” Judd asks Walker in the family quarters that had been given to them. They’d not talked about going anywhere else, and probably didn’t have anywhere else to go, but safety for the children and their survival is everything. 

There’s no Psy nutritional food in the den. Changelings don’t eat any of what their race deems acceptable. It is a foreign sight to see his brother cutting up peppers of orange and green colors. “For now,” Walker says. 

They’ve not told the SnowDancer alpha everything. Only what is too obvious not to. Judd’s alligience is to family. “For now,” he echoes. 

 

 

 

_ix._

Sometimes Judd can do nothing but watch Brenna. 

She is sunny and bright, even when shadows creep over her gaze. She is everything now, just as important to him as his family. He would do anything for her, of that he is certain. Sometimes, some days, it still feels like he’s before. As if he could wake up and be back to carrying out the orders of a Councilor who cares for nothing but death or even as isolated as he’d been before Brenna had taken him as hers. It’s still unnerving to him to be a lieutenant with people who trust him now with responsibility. People talk to him where before they’d shied away. 

He is free to touch, to kiss and hold her, be held by her in turn. 

He counts ten heartbeats and thinks of Kristine’s red hair as she’d told him things would be okay. 

Judd counts and Brenna smiles, and then he’s centered. 

 

 

 

_x._

Brenna’s above him, knees astride his hips and her palms on his bare chest. Her bangs rest askew on her forehead, mussed from where they’d put the new futon together and then from tumbling onto new said futon that they are now on. 

He rests his hand on her bare stomach, thumb stroking the skin above her navel. “I don’t understand.” 

She smiles, sharp white teeth, and leans down closer as her palms skate up to his shoulders. Her hair falls around their faces. “We’re breaking it in,” she breathes out, nose touching his and their lips so close. 

Judd can feel his brow furrow. “Isn’t the point that we broke the last one?”

Wrapping a hand around his cock, she slides and shifts till she can sink down on him. Her lips quirk to one side, pupils dilating. “It’s an expression, baby. Means we get to have sex.” 

His hands shift so that one grasps her hip and the other that had been on her stomach brushes against the under curve of one breast. “We already have sex,” he murmurs low. 

She rolls her eyes and kisses him quick. Rolling her hips with him inside her, she explains, “It’s for fun. That’s the point.” 

He helps her ride him, rolling her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, pinching when she cries out and curls her nails into his shoulder. He thinks and then, “These quarters are new to me.”

Brenna’s eyes flicker open and clarity floods them. She clenches around him, her smile turning devious. “Very true. My brother’s rooms are empty too.” 

They break the futon. His telekinesis bends the metal framework and twists it into scrap pieces. They break her brother’s rooms too. It is worth it for her bright laugh and “I love you” against his lips.


End file.
